Probabilistic Assessment of Fuel Channel Bearing Travel and End of Bearing Time

Abstract

Operators in Ontario have been assessing fuel channel elongation in nuclear generating units to ensure fuel channels remain on bearing at least until the next inspection in accordance with CSA N285.4. These assessments have so far been performed deterministically and, among other conservative assumptions, use the worst stack-up of tolerances for all relevant fuel channel components to calculate the end-of-bearing (EOB) times. Since the probability of having the worst stack-up of tolerances occurring is extremely small, a deterministic assessment provides a very conservative representation of the unit condition. The probabilistic assessment presented in this paper provides a more realistic representation of elongation and channel end-of-bearing times. For a given reactor, the probabilistic assessment used Monte Carlo techniques to generate values for fuel channel component dimensions, current fuel channel elongations, future elongations and elongation measurement errors from specified distributions. The simulated values are then used to obtain a distribution of EOB times at each lattice position in the reactor. The expected number of fuel channels reaching EOB in a given operating interval can then be compared to pre-established acceptance criteria to determine if the operating interval is acceptable. The methodology is illustrated with an example reactor. The results from 100,000 simulations at each lattice position show that the EOB times calculated in the deterministic assessment corresponded to a very low percentile of the EOB times calculated in the probabilistic assessment. This indicated that the deterministic assessment was very conservative. For the example reactor, no elongation maintenance would be necessary for approximately one year (8,000 effective full power hours) after the latest outage.